The Dead Are Living
by wishesonfallenstars
Summary: "Y-you need to… r-run," he mutters, forcing the words out past his bloodstained teeth. "No," Regina sobs. "I'm not leaving without you." She chokes back the screams she can feel blocking her throat at the soft shuffling that's inching its way closer to the barricaded planks of wood masquerading as a safe haven.


_Usual blanket 'gabi is writing' **warnings** apply - there is blood, guts, death, angst, magic, and all things horrific and wonderful (to me at least). Every single fic I post this month will be Horror. Nothing is sacred to me. No one is safe in my hands. You've been warned. _

_Written for the 'monster' prompt from Spooky OQ. Side note - not all the Spooky OQ/Horror Fest fics will be in here - only the ones over 1200 words. Every single one will be found over on tumblr though._

 ** _Necromancy is not the way to a ladies heart._**

* * *

She manages to get them into her bathroom, slams the door shut, locking it with trembling fingers and shoving the heavy cabinet as far across it as she can. She stares at it for a moment, begs it to hold, before turning to drop to her knees next to where Robin sits propped up against the side of the tub.

"Y-you need to… r-run," he mutters, forcing the words out past his bloodstained teeth.

"No," Regina sobs. "I'm not leaving without you." She chokes back the screams she can feel blocking her throat at the soft shuffling that's inching its way closer to the barricaded planks of wood masquerading as a safe haven.

"Regina… we both k-know I'm not gonna—"

"Shut up," she cuts him off, reaches up to grab one of her pristine towels and shoves it to the deep wounds in his gut, turning it from ivory to russet. "You're gonna be f-fine," she insists. A sob wraps itself around her vocal chords, strangles her and forces more tears to fall when he pats, limp and sluggish, at where she's trying in vain to keep him from leaking. "Stop it, s-top giving up."

He blinks at her, too weak to speak right now but he tries to lift the corner of his mouth into a smile. And for a second she thinks that they actually _will_ be okay. That all of this is just a ridiculously vivid nightmare, and that they'll walk out of this without scratch. But then he coughs, bubbles of blood foaming at the corners of his mouth as he whimpers. Biting at her lip she presses harder to the rips in his stomach, hushing him when he cries out.

The shuffling is louder now. Regina tries not to flinch at the sound of fingernails scratching at the other side of the door, tries to ignore the ice creeping up-down-up-down her spinal chord as she sits with her back to the bathroom entrance—and only exit.

"Reginaaaaaaa…"

Clenching her eyes shut Regina shakes her head—as if it will help in shaking away the sounds coming from the apartment—and tries not to slip further into hysterics. "It's not real, _he's_ not real."

Robin's hand slipping from its position on top of hers jolts her out of the hazy memories of unwanted touches in empty classrooms and brings her screaming back into the present. Her hands are still holding the soaked towel to his stomach where blood is pulsing from him, slower than it was before they managed to get away. His eyes have slipped closed, and Regina's lungs seize at the way his head lolls to the side.

"No, no, no, _no! Robin!_ Robin come on… _wake up,_ " she begs him as she drops her head forward onto his still chest and sobs because this isn't real. This cannot be real. But the crimson painting her hands and forearms seems very real, the blood that's no longer warm and seeping freely from beneath her fiance's skin is too bright to be anything other than reality, and the way her own body is aching from the hits she'd taken before Robin got home and tackled that… that _thing_ wearing her worst nightmares face, throwing himself between her and the knife with no care for his own safety, is too painful to be a dream.

"I know you're in there, Regina." Nails scratch at the door and set her teeth on edge. He— _it_ —doesn't try to break down their flimsy bathroom door.

Biting down on her cries she lifts one shaking, red smeared hand from Robin's stomach, reaches up to press her fingers under the hinge of his jaw. "Please, please, _please,_ " she's never been one to beg before, but she'll grovel and plead and sell her damn soul if it means she can feel the comforting, soft _thud-thud-thud_ of his pulse.

Grovelling doesn't seem to be working.

Regina isn't aware that she's screaming until the noise cuts out, her throat now raw and aching, as Robin grows colder and colder the longer they sit, battered, and broken, and bleeding on the no-longer-white tiled floor.

He's dead, or very close to it.

And she will be too if she can't work out a way to get away from _him_ , and soon. "Fuck, _fuck_ ," she mutters as she presses back down onto the gouges decorating Robin's torso. "Oh god, please, _please come back_." Maybe he just needs a moment. Maybe he's not really gone, and she won't have to face that thing on her own again. Sobbing she lets her hands fall from trying to stop the non-existent blood flow from Robin's body, tips forward to press a desperate kiss to his slack mouth and resting her forehead against his as she cups shaking fingers to either side of his face, staining his ashen skin crimson.

"I'm so sorry," she whispers. "I'm so, so, sorry, Robin. I—" _this is all my fault._ She arranges him to rest more comfortably against the porcelain of the tub, tears still streaming down her face to mix with clotting blood from her own cuts, before pressing more kisses to his brow, eyelids, nose and finally lips. "I'm going to fix this," she promises.

Standing up, her legs barely holding her aching frame, Regina rakes her eyes over every little, useless object in their bathroom, over the window that is too high up to safely jump from, before landing on the mirrored doors of the cupboard over the sink. It's quiet on the other side of the door but Robin is dead, and she's not taking any chances. So she grits her teeth and punches at the mirror until it shatters, blood splattered shards dropping all around her. Snatching up the biggest one she can see, uncaring of how the edges cut into the meat of her hand, more blood welling up as she tightens her grip on the only thing she has a hope of defending herself with.

Wincing at the screeching that comes as she inches the cabinet she blinks back the tears and squares her shoulders before opening the door and squeezing through the gap. The apartment so silent that she finds herself holding her breath as she creeps through her home.

Leopold's rotting corpse is lying in a heap in the middle of the living room, crumpled like a marionette that's had its strings cut, and no longer tormenting her by making her face the monster who destroyed her teenage years. For a split second she relaxes.

But that's all he needs.

She's still staring at Mr White's body—the cause of most of her constant nightmares—when she feels the air shift behind her and the oxygen turns to ice in her lungs as clammy hands come down around her throat and cover her mouth.

"Shhh, my queen," he whispers into her ear. Her stomach rolls as Sidney runs his nose along the line of her neck. "You're safe now."

Regina throws her skull backwards, slamming into Sidney's nose. She hears the _crack_ it makes before lurching forward and around, raising the mirror segment up between them and backing away from the seemingly harmless, if infatuated, clerk from her office.

"You shouldn't have done that, Regina," he growls as he tries and fails to stem the blood now pouring from his broken nose. "I don't want to have to hurt you, but we belong together."

"No, we don't," she whimpers. _Robin_ , she thinks, _I belong with Robin._ "What did you do, Sidney?" she asks, though she doesn't expect an answer—doesn't know if she really _wants_ one.

"I made it so that we could be happy."

Shaking her head, Regina edges backwards, the mirror shaking in her grasp and blood dripping over the carpet as she focuses on getting as far away from him as possible. She never takes her eyes off of him, not wanting to give him the chance to come at her from behind again, but she forgets—for all of a second—that the body of her long-dead High School government teacher is sprawled out behind her, and as she works to increase the space between herself and Sidney, she trips over him and crashes backwards through the glass coffee table.

It doesn't hurt. Not right away, stunned as she is from hitting the table and then the floor after that. But then she blinks her eyes back open and pain slams into her like a train. One of her legs is twisted the wrong way—broken, she thinks hysterically—and the other is skewered by a spike of glass. Glass fragments poke holes through her entire body, and she prays for the first time since childhood that this it. That she'll pass out before she has to look at either of her tormentors ever again, and she'll be with Robin, be _happy_ and _safe_ once again.

But then Sidney is straddling her waist and wrapping something cold and solid around her neck. He leans in close, nose to nose, and whispers that she made him do this. That all he ever wished was to be able to look upon her face, to be with her, _always_ , but that she and Robin ruined it all, before his hands tug at the small chain link rope that he's looped there, pulling it tighter and tighter until black spots pop in front of her eyes.

"If I cannot have you, my Queen, then no one else can," is the last thing she hears before the black comes for her, wrapping her up like Robin's arms do when the heating craps out in midwinter.

* * *

 _thoughts?_


End file.
